A lot to answer for

Snippet from a work in progress.

It has been noted that we are already living in something like a cyberpunk dystopia (albeit one that is, of course, unevenly distributed). The 'soft' neoliberalism of the 1990s and 2000s has made way for a new wave, whose distinct features are still subject to debate. But it is certainly a neoliberalism shaped by its accommodation of far-right fascist agitation, and by a neofeudalist approach to the challenges of climate change. It is also the neoliberalism of platform capitalism and surveillance capitalism -- a neoliberalism profoundly shaped by big tech -- and it is credible that it has been ideologically influenced by science fiction. It is credible, that is, that key actors at key junctures have pursued science-fictional future for its own sake, letting the science fictional imagination fulfill the function of the moral imagination. So science fiction, we suggest, has a lot to answer for.

But which science fiction? Of course, there is a quantitative project there, the cultural consumption of Silicon Valley. But can we hazard a guess? It has not been the static, programmatic utopias or dystopias, thick with institutional detail, that have given big tech actors their lodestar. Nor has it been self-conscious design fiction or diegetic prototyping. It has been the critical utopia. Critical and the ambiguous utopias and dystopias, and the utopian impulse within the rich, intermingling subgenres of transhumanist, singularitarian, postcyberpunk, and new space opera science fiction. Exhilarating, freewheeling narratives that unfold unpredictably on a grand scale, that are often picaresque either spatially or temporally, that often gleefully trash the expectations of characters and readers about the limits of the possible, all the while fairly clear about one thing: 'science fiction is more about the present than it is about the future.'

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Over at the Vector website, an article on speculative fiction and bioterrorism, with an emphasis on so-called 'lone wolf' bioterrorism.

Economics for SF Researchers & Writers

A reading list of economics-related titles that may be of interest to researchers working in Science Fiction Studies and/or science fiction writers:

Journals / Series

• Journal of Cultural Economy
• Ecological Economics
• International Journal of Green Economics
• The Real Utopias Project, Vol. 1-6 🔥

Books

• Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (1900)
• Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913)
• Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (1922)
• Marcel Mauss, The Gift (1925)
• Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)
• Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944)
• Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (1953)
• Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy (1962)
• John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (1963)
• Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (1969)
• Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)
• Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (1972)
• Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (1972)
• James S. Albus, Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot Revolution (1976)
• Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)
• Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981)
• Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life (1981)
• Deirdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)
• Barbara Bergmann, The Economic Emergence of Women (1986)
• Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development (1987)
• Margaret Levi, Of Rules and Revenue (1988)
• J. Parry and M. Bloch (ed.), Money and the Morality of Exchange (1989)
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990) 🔥
• Michael Albert, Robin Hahnel, Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century (1991)
• Caroline Humphrey and Stephen Hugh-Jones (ed.), Barter, Exchange and Value (1992)
• Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, Towards a New Socialism (1993)
• Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-Of-The-Way Place (1993)
• Viviana Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, & Other Currencies (1994)
• Marguerite Young, Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias (1994)
• Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (1994)
• Jane Humphries, Gender and Economics (1995)
• Farhad Nomani and Ali Rahnema, Islamic Economic Systems (1995)
• T.G. Rawski, Economics and the Historian (1996)
• Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (1996)
• Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (1996)
• Diana Wynne-Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996)
• Theodor Adorno, Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader (1997)
• Susana Narotzky, New Directions in Economic Anthropology (1997)
• Susan Strange, Mad Money (1998)
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)
• Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth (1999)
• Martha Woodmansee, Mark Osteen, New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics (1999)
• Deirdre McCloskey ed. by Stephen Ziliak, Measurement and Meaning in Economics: The Essential Deirdre McCloskey (1999) 🔥
• Witold Kula, The Problems and Methods of Economic History (2001)
• Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism (2001)
• Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (2001) 🔥
• Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (2002)
• Lourdes Benería, Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered (2003)
• David Harvey, Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason (2017)
• Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (2004)
• Ernesto Screpanti and Stefano Zamagni, An Outline of the History of Economic Thought (2005)
• Julie A. Nelson, Economics for Humans (2006)
• Elspeth Brown, Cultures of Commerce: Representation and American Business Culture, 1877-1960 (2006)
• Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
• Joyce Jacobsen and Adam Zeller, Queer Economics: A Reader (2007)
• Diane Coyle, The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters (2007)
• Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008) 🔥
• Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (2008)
• Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (2008) 
• Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009)
• Nancy Folbre, Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas (2009)
• Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2009)
• Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism (2009)
• Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Institutional Diversity (2010)
• Francis Spufford, Red Plenty (2010)
• Juliet B. Schor, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (2010)
• Viviana Zelizer, Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy (2010) 🔥
• David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital (2010)
• Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (2010)
• David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011) 🔥
• Louis Brennan, Alessandra Vecchi, The Business of Space: The Next Frontier of International Competition (2011)
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
• Kalpana Rahita Seshadri, HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language (2012)
• Eric D. Smith, Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope (2012)
• Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (2012)
• Irene Aldridge, High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems (2013)
• Mary Morgan, The World and the Model: How Economists Work and Think (2013)
• Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (2013)
• Brett Scott, The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (2013) 🔥
• Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (2013)
• Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User's Guide (2013) 🔥
• Anna Grandori, Epistemic Economics and Organization: Forms of Rationality and Governance for a Wiser Economy (2013)
• Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History (2014)
• Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money (2014) 🔥
• Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (2014)
• Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2015)
• Paul Mason, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (2015)
• Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future (2015)
• Will Davies, Johanna Montgomerie, and Sara Walin, Financial Melancholia: Mental Health and Indebtedness (2015)
• Andrekos Varnava, Imperial Expectations and Realities: El Dorados, Utopias and Dystopias (2015)
• Melanie Swan, Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy (2015)
• Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015)
• Manu Saadia, Trekonomics (2016) 🔥
• Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus (2016)
• Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)
• Janelle Knox-Hayes, The Cultures of Markets: The Political Economy of Climate Governance (2016)
• Stuart J. Smyth and José Falck-Zepeda, Socio-Economic Considerations in Biotechnology Regulation (Natural Resource Management and Policy (2016)
• Ram S. Jakhu, Joseph N. Pelton, Yaw Otu Mankata Nyampong, Space Mining and Its Regulation (2016)
• Julian Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race and the Birth of Private Space Flight (2017)
• Joseph F. Coughlin, The Longevity Economy: Inside the World's Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market (2017)
• Peter Frase, Four Futures (2017)
• Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2017)
• Ryan Kiggins, The Political Economy of Robots: Prospects for Prosperity and Peace in the Automated 21st Century (2017)
• Kate Raworth: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) 🔥
• Alexander MacDonald, The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War (2017)
• Winifred Curran and Trina Hamilton, Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification (2017)
• Ҫınla Akdere and Christine Baron (ed.), Economics and Literature: A Comparative Interdisciplinary Approach (2017)
• Will Davies (ed.), Economic Science Fiction (2018) 🔥
• Paulina Golinska, Logistics Operations and Management for Recycling and Reuse (2018)
• Julia Puaschunder, Governance and Climate Justice: Global South and Developing Nations (2018)
• Chrystia Freeland and Lawrence H Summers, The Post-Widget Society: Economic Possibilities for Our Children (2018)
• Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionise Work, and Remake the World (2018)
• Cheryl McEwan, Postcolonialism, Decoloniality, and Development (2018)
• Michelle Chihara and Matt Seybold, The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics (2018)
• Mark Rifkin, Fictions of Land and Flesh: Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation (2019)